Chapter 13.1

Importance of Documentation

AmazonDocumentation is basically a way to tell readers of your program what your program is about. At a minimum it should describe what it does. If you feel like you can describe what algorithms it uses, when it’s written, and so on. Within a program, documentation refers to helpful comments describing what the program does at what point.

Everybody should know that detailed comments in a program is very important because they explain every stage of the program and how it achieves a particular task. Only good documentation can serve these purposes; poor documentation lacks clarifications and makes programs even less readable.

Some think documenting a program takes too much time and is not necessary because experienced programmers should be able to decipher the meaning of each line of code. While this is true in most cases, it is not in others.

In big, complex software applications, certain variables are used indirectly to do complicated operations. Without seeing any comments, a programmer could be totally clueless.Giving meaningful names to variables and other program elements helps enhance readability, and complementing them with comments is even better. Getting into the habit of documenting every program you write will prove beneficial to you and people who read your programs.